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Today, when audiences think of the Percy Jackson franchise, the well-received TV show airing on Disney+ is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Several years before that project got off the ground, Rick Riordan’s hit fantasy book series was adapted for the big screen. In the early 2010s, a pair of Percy Jackson movies — Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters — was released, as 20th Century Fox was hoping to capitalize on the YA trend that delivered successes like the Harry Potter franchise. Things didn’t turn out as well as the studio would have hoped, but now the Percy Jackson movies are finding an audience on streaming.
For the week of June 15th-21st, both Percy Jackson films were among the top 10 movies on Netflix in the United States. The Lightning Thief ranked No. 4, with Sea of Monsters right behind in fifth place. This was the first week the two films placed on Netflix’s chart.
Why Did the Percy Jackson Film Series End After Just Two Movies?
By the time The Lightning Thief hit theaters in 2010, the five installments of the original Percy Jackson novel series had all been published. Riordan has continued to write new books, dubbed The Senior Year Adventures, into the 2020s. So, when Fox acquired the film rights to Riordan’s works, the studio envisioned Percy Jackson becoming one of their signature franchises — their answer to Harry Potter (veteran Harry Potter director Chris Columbus even helmed the first Percy Jackson movie). Executives probably didn’t see a scenario where the film series ended after just two movies.
Audience reception is perhaps a main reason why the plug was pulled on Percy Jackson movies so soon. In contrast from the Harry Potter films, which routinely earned positive reviews, reactions to Percy Jackson were far more mixed. The Lightning Thief has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 48%, and Sea of Monsters is even lower at 43%. The films aren’t without their merits (the cast, the action, the riffs on Greek mythology), but they didn’t fully deliver on their potential. In the case of The Lightning Thief, arguably the biggest issue was the lack of faithfulness to the source material. Adaptations make changes to the original text all the time since the story is being told in a different medium, but none other than Riordan criticized the handling of The Lightning Thief, even telling the studio that they risked alienating fans of the books. By the time Sea of Monsters came around, the damage had already been done.
Percy Jackson also struggled a bit at the box office. The Lightning Thief grossed $31.2 million domestically in its opening weekend, coming in third place. Sea of Monsters fared far worse, earning $14.4 million in its debut (good enough for fourth place). In contrast, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone opened with $90.2 million domestically, more than what both Percy Jackson films made total in their respective stateside runs. With the franchise struggling to make an impact at the multiplex (Sea of Monsters earned $199.8 million globally against a budget of $90 million) and receiving largely negative reviews, 20th Century Fox felt it wasn’t worth pursuing a third Percy Jackson movie. At one point, there were discussions about a threequel happening, but it obviously never came to fruition.
When Disney finalized its deal to acquire 20th Century Fox, one of the many assets the Mouse House gained was the Percy Jackson rights. Rather than rebooting the film series, the studio moved forward with the aforementioned TV adaptation, which has turned out for the best — at least from a critical perspective. Earlier this year, data showed that Season 2 was lagging behind the first season in terms of viewership, but that hasn’t had any impact on the show’s future thus far. A third season has already wrapped filming and is slated to debut on Disney+ later this year, so hopefully Disney will at least be able to bring the entire original series to life. And while fans wait for the Season 3 premiere, they can revisit the films to see how the versions compare.
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If You Liked Percy Jackson, You’ll Love This Five-Season Fantasy Masterpiece
